By Penelope Sofias
The online media landscape has a vast array of opinions, claims, and statements. Social media can be a tool used by almost anyone to express feelings and ideals, however, it can be difficult to decipher what these claims mean and what impact they have.
On September 10th, 2025 conservative politician and activist, Charlie Kirk was shot during a “Prove Me Wrong” speech at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s death has sparked conversation from both political parties about gun violence and free speech. One Instagram post that caught my attention was by The Daily Wire. The post compared reactions of Charlie Kirk’s death to the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The caption: “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.” – Charlie Kirk
Using the SIFT Method:
S- Stop
This post immediately brought to mind numerous questions. I took a moment to pause and determine why this post caught my eye. Right off the bat, the post is comparing these events meaning that they have similarities but the responses to them are vastly different. It depicts one as wholesome, community based, and loving and the other as violent and criminal. So I ask myself are these comparable events? Are these realistic depictions of the public’s reaction to these events? Where do these different pieces of footage come from? Why are people protesting? Is there more to the story than what is being shown? The fact that this post has so many unanswered questions is the reason why it must be evaluated and looked into.
I – Investigate
The source of this post is The Daily Wire. But what is the Daily Wire? With this question in my search engine, Wikipedia states that “The Daily Wire is an American conservative media company founded in 2015 by political commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boreing” and also says that The Daily Wire has a history of reporting from solely a conservative stance, with some stories misstating facts with unverified information. Understanding that The Daily Wire takes a single sided perspective when it comes to journalism is a key point to this post. The juxtaposition between people hugging and praying over the death of Charlie Kirk as opposed to the videos of looting and violence in reaction to George Floyd’s death makes me wonder if there is other footage that is being excluded.
F – Find Better Coverage
To find more perspective on the situation at hand, I need to understand if George Floyd’s murder was responded to purely with violence or if there were peaceful protests and acts of civil disobedience as well. To find this out, I use the “Lateral Reading” technique and utilize multiple tabs and searches to find sources outside of The Daily Wire. From looking into numerous articles by The New York Times, TIME, and The Guardian, it is clear that while after George Floyd’s murder there were indeed violent riots, the majority were actually acts of peaceful civil unrest. According to ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), a non-profit monitor that analyses conflicts and protests, “In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity”. This proves that The Daily Wire took a biased stance when showing clips of the response to George Floyd’s death.
T – Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context
To answer the question on where The Daily Wire acquired the footage from, I attempted to reverse image search screenshots of the different clips shown in the post. Unfortunately, because there were so many videos spliced together, it proved difficult to find the original source. While it is clear that the videos shown in the “response to George Floyd” section, include posters that say BLM, it is unclear which protests these were from. Unable to find clear credits and sources, my original thought of “Is this a reliable post?” is strengthened.
Conclusion:
Understanding the background of events like the murders of Charlie Kirk and George Floyd are key to evaluating headlines and posts about them. The Daily Wire painted an entirely violent image in context to George Floyd. This can be dangerous to someone who lacks the background knowledge on the event. Assuming that anyone protesting for George Floyd or Black Lives Matter are violent criminals is a very dangerous take that it seems The Daily Wire is trying to encourage. It’s also important to note however, that George Floyd and Charlie Kirk were both victims of violence. Political commentator Charlie Sykes states in an interview with NPR, “we do not use violence to counter ideas with which we disagree”. While The Daily Wire can argue that the death of Charlie Kirk is an unjust tragedy, it should not be compared to a socio-political movement like BLM. The response to George Floyd was due to police violence brutally targeting a black man. It is crucial to use tools like SIFT and lateral reading, to fact check the information you see online.